


Parenthood

by Lerry_Hazel



Category: Earth: Final Conflict
Genre: 5+1 Things, Additional Warnings Apply, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, Mental Link, Parent-Child Relationship, Series Spoilers, but only minor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-08-11 18:15:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7902769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lerry_Hazel/pseuds/Lerry_Hazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Liam perceived Da’an as a parent, and one time he actually witnessed it</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Not mine, obviously.
> 
> WARNING: this fic contains vague references to depression, suicide, drug abuse and other nasty things. None of it actually happens, but, just in case.
> 
> A/N: No one likes 04.22, but otherwise I’ve tried to make this as canon-compliant as I could stand; although my cosy little pink-tingled AU (where Da’an is a little less oblivious, Zo’or a little saner, the Taelons in general not so sinister and Liam not so self-righteous) is probably still showing.

1.

‘Well, she doesn’t seem particularly concerned about the Taelon threat, but perhaps we could appeal to her scientific curiosity – ‘

‘Or we could just send Liam to her,’ Maiya remarked casually. ‘She told me privately she wouldn’t kick him out of her bed.’

‘He wouldn’t know what to do there,’ Augur snorted.

‘Why?’

‘Well, firstly because he is barely two months old.’

‘But surely –‘ Maiya started, looking uncomfortable, like she always did when confronted with a reminder of Liam’s alien heritage.

Liam had two sets of human memories to learn from. And the mechanics was not that tricky.

‘I could do it,’ he assured quickly, before another discussion of what the gap between his apparent and actual age left him able and unable to do inevitably broke out.

‘Are you attracted to her, even a little?’ Lily asked quietly.

The idea of feeling attraction to just one person confused Liam. Kimera, essentially a parasitic species, needed to infuse two suitable sets of DNA with their own in order to reproduce. Liam would grow up to be attracted to a couple’s sexual chemistry.

‘I don’t need to copulate with her to acquire information’.

Agents Sandoval and Beckett both knew how to be charming, though they generally chose not to. Liam was relatively certain he could do the same.

‘Don’t you, really?’ Lily wondered gravely.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You remember, Hagel killed the first woman he tried to join with –’

Hagel had put too much of himself into the experience: humans truly weren’t high enough on the evolutionary ladder to cohabitate with energy-based beings. He didn’t repeat the mistake. Neither would Liam.

‘ – and Beckett told us fake-Sandoval initiated the joining without saying a single word to her. Bad enough if he didn’t care, but what if he genuinely couldn’t help it?’

‘I won’t be able to initiate a joining. I haven’t even shed my corporeal shell yet.’

‘Shed your corporeal – ew!’

‘How do you even know all this?’ Maiya inquired.

‘Genetic memory, remember?’

‘But you are one of a kind, Liam,’ Lily reminded. There is nothing to “remember”.’

‘Plus,’ Augur interjected, ‘Hagel was out of range for how many million years? Who’s to say the guy hadn’t missed anything important?’

‘Bottom line is, we know very little about energy-based beings,’ Lily concluded, ‘so, perhaps you should – refrain – from intimate relationship for now, just to be safe.’

‘Yeah, tough luck, kid,’ Augur sighed.

Liam nodded dutifully and brought the conversation back to Dr. Atkins and her seemingly out-of-nowhere transfer to a Taelon-run facility. He suspected he should be more upset, but in truth was not particularly disturbed by his alienness: surely, the memory of his ancestors stashed in the depth of his brain would guide him when the time is right.

And if for some reason it didn’t work, he could always ask Da’an.

***

**

*


	2. Chapter 2

2.

People should really mind their own business, Liam mused. Lone Taelon-haters in particular should take their concerns to the nearest Resistance cell to be dealt with in a calm and organized manner, instead of trying to take a grand stand on their own. Then they wouldn’t have had Zo’or single-handedly preventing an explosion about to wipe out half of the city in front of five billion viewers. And now some sad looser on a quest to uncover an indistinct but definitely evil Taelon plot would not have accidentally released a bio-hazard reagent, causing the entire facility to go on lockdown and giving hypothetical evil Taelons more than enough time to dispose of any possible evidence.

The only actual Taelon present at the moment of the accident happened to be Da’an, who was only there because the scientist officially assigned to the research center in question had not left his lab on the Mothership for three weeks and could not be bothered by puny humans and their bureaucratic concerns. And Liam had only talked the Companion into touring the facility, instead of reviewing the relevant documents in the Embassy or, better yet, through video conference, because the Resistance needed to know what the Taelons were making in their new state-of-the-art medical center besides ridiculously grateful patients.

Now they had to wait out the mandatory two-hour quarantine locked in a tiny ward, and Da’an was patiently explaining to a representative of the Public Health department that, being a Taelon diplomat in eights generation, he had no idea how to trick a Taelon automated lock into opening prematurely, while the attending physician was trying desperately to restart the second representative’s inopportunely malfunctioning pacemaker. Liam himself was relegated to holding the ward’s original inhabitant, who, obviously having had her birth defect successfully corrected, now boasted a pair of lungs strong enough to make the entire state aware how unhappy she was to be dangling between some stranger’s clumsy hands.     

‘Perhaps your skills would be better used elsewhere,’ Da’an suggested pointedly, turning away from Representative #1, who was still rambling indignantly, and taking the baby girl from his Protector’s tenuous grip. Liam complied with an “I’d like to see you do better” scoff and went to poke around the dashboard in the corner.

The ear-piercing wailing quieted down within minutes, and, having not-so-discretely taken photos of every set of data on display, Liam was surprised to find the girl expertly arranged in the crook of Da’an’s elbow, giggling as her tiny hands flailed around, trying to grab the alien’s glowing finger.

‘Hey, she likes you,’ the Protector grinned.

‘She is responding to warmth and affection,’ Da’an replied dryly, but his energy matrix lit up in delight, and the girl let out an enthusiastic squeal. ‘And bright colours, apparently.’

‘How do you know this staff?’ Liam blurted out in his characteristic display of bluntness. ‘I thought Taelons don’t have children.’

‘Taelons no longer have children,’ Da’an corrected, briefly looking around to make sure other occupants of the room didn’t hear him, and then turned his full attention to the baby in his arms, the rest of the world seemingly ceasing to exist.

Liam knew this sort of information could prove crucial for determining the Taelon’s ultimate goal of arriving on Earth; but the mere idea of divulging this new-found understanding to the Resistance felt almost sacrilegious.  

***

**

*


	3. Chapter 3

3.

The psychiatric institute was in chaos: obviously, the virus had started to spread. But, once Liam had managed to follow Zo’or’s signal to the basement, he was greeted by an even more shocking sight.

The Head of the Synod was perched on some sort of old coach, sandwiched between two human teenagers, who were obliviously chatting his ear off.

‘And they keep saying it’s for our own good,’ the girl lamented.

‘You don’t know what it’s like to be a “mentally unstable adolescent”,’ the boy agreed fervently.

‘Oh, but I do in fact know,’ Zo’or answered matter-of-factly.

The children (and Liam, pausing at the door) threw him identical questioning look.

‘I too was a – sickly child,’ Zo’or started dreamily, reclining like he would under an energy shower. ‘The last surviving child, the baby of the entire species. My Esteemed Parent,’ he spat out the Eunoia term of courtesy like a curse, ‘seemed constantly terrified something might happen to me. I spent the first five hundred years of my life not running around, not touching things, not overexerting myself and preferably not leaving the house unsupervised. It was suffocating. I left as soon as I was old enough. And still, wherever I turned, he was always there, bugging me with his support and advice, as if he – had nothing better to do.’

Zo’or sat upright, his mocking expression abruptly turning serious:

‘I was the center of his universe. He had no one else. And I kept pushing him away. I still do. That must hurt. I should not have run away again. He must be frantic. I need to – oh, no!’

He jumped up and threw himself across the room, just in time to spare his interlocutors a burst of unhealthily bright energy his body suddenly started to emit. Liam fought his way through what looked like a particularly large spotlight and felt like a blast of gale-force, and finally managed to attach the vaccination chip to his neck. The light show promptly died out, and the Taelon went limp in the Major’s arms.

‘Zo’or!’ two terrified, but also clearly concerned voices exclaimed simultaneously.

‘He’s going to be fine,’ Liam assured the two teenagers cowering in the corner. ‘I’m taking him home.’

Hopefully, the Head of the Synod wouldn’t dismiss his feverish epiphany upon regaining consciousness. And hopefully his overzealous parent, whoever it was, would welcome a chance to put his wayward child back on right track.    

***

**

*


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: this chapter in particular contains multiple references to unpleasant things.  
> Also, there are mentions of MPREG, as in, Taelons are not truly male, but, you know.

4.

Renee shouldn’t have taken him to “the Womb”. He was determined to stay angry with Da’an and his pointless musings on the future of the Taelon race crippling his efforts to support humanity. But now instead of mourning Lt. Jack Malley, like a fellow human should, all Liam could think about was those endless rows of tiny blue bodies suspended between life and death for eternity. Da’an’s own kids were somewhere over there, and the lost one could have easily been his. Hell, maybe it had been his, and Liam hadn’t bothered to ask, too eager to spill his accusations. Of course, Da’an would have probably fed him some fine-embroidered half-truth, and it was probably too late anyway, and hanging out in the “absolutely no humans allowed” part of the ship was definitely not a good idea, but Liam couldn’t help it: something was calling him back there.

Deadly silent to a human ear, “The Womb” spoke to Liam’s Kimero mind with hundreds of unintelligible voices. The empty crate was already gone, but the remaining Taelon babies were staring at him accusingly with their featureless faces. Liam shuddered, and resolutely put his hand on the wall.

 

_Gloomy insides of the Mothership melt away, and Liam becomes a little bird on a beautiful blooming tree. Gentle breeze is rustling through the flowers, as if they are conversing softly in Eunoia. The branch Liam perches upon holds four buds still closed tight, but he can sense life nested deep within._

_‘This one is just as cruel,’ they whisper in unison. ‘No, not cruel. He simply does not understand. But he can hear us. We can explain.’_

_‘I am listening,’ Liam chirpes, touching his beak to the nearest bud. ‘Tell me what’s going on.’_

_The world lurches forward, and Liam suddenly finds himself looking at a vaguely human (or, more likely, Taelon) shaped pole of dark-purple blur._

_‘You do not have to conceive at every cycle,’ the blur is saying. ‘The strain is killing you.’_

_‘I will recover,’ Da’an’s steely voice answers from all around Liam._

_‘But why do you insist on doing it to yourself?’ the blur persists. ‘You already have a child, your duty to the Communality has been performed.’_

_‘My child is the youngest of his peers by almost four hundred years. I do not want him to grow up alone.’_

_The scene fades, and now Liam is trapped in an elevator, no, he is hiding in an elevator, and the world outside is burning, but the cables that keep the elevators suspended are giving out one by one, and if the fall doesn’t kill him the fire surely will._

_‘Stop it, Da’an,’ a vaguely familiar voice chides. ‘The child will be born today.’_

_‘He is not ready.’_

_‘You cannot just will him to stay inside.’_

_‘I did it once.’_

_‘When you were seven hundred years younger. You have since failed trice. Stoop torturing yourself, Da’an.’_

_‘I just want my child to live.’_

_‘And I want you to live!’ the voice cries, anguished._

_‘Then help me,’ Da’an asks softly._

_Something like an echo of someone else’s pain brushes the edge of Liam’s consciousness, and for a moment the elevator seems to stabilize just before another cord snaps._

_Liam is sitting in a glass jar, watching the dark purple Taelon pushing tiny bits of his own energy into Da’an’s half dead body. Something else is looming just at the edge of his vision, something that Liam perceives as a menacing presence, to which, however, the pitiful shreds of Da’an’s consciousness are clinging desperately._

_‘So, this one is going to the embryonic tubes too,’ the menacing presence intones coldly. ‘As was expected.’_

_‘At least this madness is over now,’ the purple Taelon replies tiredly. ‘His gestation conduits are fried for good.’_

_The menacing presence withdraws completely. Da’an’s still form shudders and starts to dissolve into a chaotic_ _whirlwind of glowing particles. The purple Taelon curses and slammes his hand into a nearby panel, activating some kind of an alarm._

_Through the mist a Kimero in him recognizes as a sign of sharing an experience through the Communality Liam watches from the relative safety of the Mothership as the beautiful violet and turquoise pearl of Taelon turns black, black, black, and feels frantic minds searching through thousands of broken psychic links, longing for relevant connections but only finding death, death, death._

_Da'an is addressing some sort of alien assembly, every energy duct constricted in stress and fatigue, but speech flowing as freely as ever: surely such an abhorrent act of aggression against a major ally would not be dismissed; a toad-like alien promptly does just that, stating a disagreement between the Taelons and the Jiridians is basically an internal affair, – and every world withholding their support in this dire hour deserves to burn, burn, burn, and from now on every Taelon gift would come with a price._

_T'than assembling a crew for essentially suicidal mission to Jiridian home world._

_Ma'el's last transmission, cryptic at best and completely insane at worst, but what do they have to lose?_

_Earth, beautiful and primitive, offering a hundred new questions for every answer, but at least something to look forward to._

_Humanity, incomprehensible in their corporality, so easy to sway, quick to be awed by a minor display of technological advancements, quicker yet to doubt and mistrust._

_Looking into William Boon’s concerned face – never knowing whether it is the CVI speaking._

_A warm hand on his wrist – a spark running to his very core: finally, a tangible connection: Boon’s comrade, overwhelming physical strength, and bravery, and protectiveness, and no implant._

_Zo’or’s face, contorted in disgust: ‘Your need to forge emotional bonds is bordering on pathological.’_

_Atavus. An ugly shadow looming beyond his conscious mind. The Communality pulling away in confusion and suspicion. No way to explain, needing to keep Liam’s involvement in his reconnection secret. Genuinely not knowing what had ripped him away in the first place._

_‘Your support of humanity is useless without the power to exercise it.’_

_‘I would not have done the same for you.’_

_And the world is harsh, and cold, and empty save for four tiny corpses trapped in their transparent prisons waiting for the better times that might just never come, so would it not be kinder to set them free?_

_Kryss is bitter and painful going down, but if you take enough, for a little while your mind blissfully shuts down._

_Grey sky hangs gloomily over the snow-covered ground, and the air itself feels frozen through. The tree is gone, but a small figure is standing in its place, dark-blue face barely discernible under dark-blue cloak, a small blue hand offering a sole brunch, black but not completely dead, four buds still desperately clinging to it under the icy crust. Liam reaches out to take it in spite of himself, and suddenly feels a warm wave surging through him. The ice melts away, and the brunch sprouts fresh green leaves, the buds blossoming into gorgeous flowers._

_‘Help him,’ the blue-skinned boy intones gravely, and promptly dissolves into a shower of icy sparkles._    

 

As soon as the real world reassembled itself around him Liam ran, and was punching the coordinates of Washington Embassy into the nearest portal even before his blazing shaquarawa powered down.

‘I shouldn’t have yelled,’ he offered quietly, stepping into his Companion’s office.

‘I understand,’ Da’an smiled serenely, as if he understood much more that his young Protector could possibly formulate. ‘I will see you in the morning.’

And he carefully stepped away from the weird potted plant in the corner where Liam had a spare energy gun tucked away.

Jack Malley was still dead, and the Taelons weren’t still going anywhere. But that night Liam went to bed with a clear sense of having prevented a tragedy.

***

**

*


	5. Chapter 5

5.

‘I repeat, open confrontation is not an option at the moment, Liam.’ Da’an let his chair recline, having lost the battle to stay upright. His human façade partially melted away, giving his now almost transparent face an unhealthy bluish tingle. His right hand twitched in the aborted pattern of activating the energy shower: he had three more meetings to go through first.

Liam knew his Companion was exhausted. Continuous lack of support from other members of the Synod was driving Da’an up the wall, his kryss addiction was still gnawing onto him, and, without the respite the drug had once provided, so was the sense of despair and guilt over the death of the people he had personally killed in his Atavus form, not to mention those countless human (and non-human) beings whose demise had been less directly caused by his decisions.

At this point Siobhan Beckett would have wanted to give Da’an a hug. Hagel, once convinced to look past a Taelon who deserved any suffering coming his way by default, would have advised something that to Liam’s mostly human mind looked suspiciously like hand-holding. His own instinct of a Companion Protector demanded to shut the Embassy down for a day or two, and give Da’an a break he so obviously needed, whether the Taelon himself admitted it or not. But the part of Liam committed to the Resistance movement demanded actions, and ruthless strategy he had inherited from Ronald Sandoval suggested to strike at the most vulnerable. And so Liam persisted.

‘There is no right time for you,’ he started accusingly. ‘It’s always about “patience” and “caution” with you, but you know what? Patience takes us nowhere! We need to actually do something!’

‘You are so very young,’ the Companion murmured with a fond smile.

Liam snorted indignantly.

‘You are, though,’ Da’an continued in that deliberate leisurely tone that made people all over the galaxy shut up and listen entranced. ‘I have literally seen more millennia than you have years. On Taelon, I would not have let you out of my sight for the next two centuries. Kimera, although they do exclusively manifest in adult material bodies, would have kept you under complete mind control of the Communality for another five. As a human, at your actual age you would not have been expected to control your own body functions. And yet, you presume – ‘

‘I was born with the complete knowledge of a race you eliminated and two people you enslaved programmed in my head. I know enough not to expect the Taelons to offer anything we don’t take by force!’  

‘You may possess the life experience of three soldiers. I, however, was conducting interplanetary negotiations before some of your ancestors even discovered firearms. And I am telling you that at the moment none of Earth governments, nor you precious Resistance has nothing at their disposal the Synod might find sufficiently threatening. We are desperate, Liam. We have nothing to lose.’

‘Yes, and in your desperation you have condoned Zo’or’s madness to the point where the Synod itself can’t control him anymore. We’ve waited long enough, but if this crisis is to be resolved in anything but a big bang, he has to be taken out of the equation. I’m not asking you to do it yourself, but when we make a move I need to know you’re going to make the right choice.’

‘I chose to leave the remnants of my world behind, chasing the ghostly hope of salvation that probably only exists in legends,’ Da’an hissed, Taelonian accent creeping into his usually melodious voice along with slightly hysterical notes. ‘I chose to ally myself with the Resistance against my own people. And when your mind first touched mine, so complex and alien, yet so trusting, and open, and so very young, I chose to accept you as my own. I decided then and there I could never let any harm come your way. Whatever it takes, however much you hate me afterwards, I will always put your safety above everyone else’s on this planet, human or Taelon; but if you attempt to hurt Zo’or, you will have to go through me first. Because I will not – you cannot ask me to choose between my children!’

The Companion made an obvious effort to solidify his humanoid appearance and hide his distress, but the alarming twitching of his energy matrix was still visible.

‘Well, shit,’ Liam concluded mentally. Born from two implants mourning the loss of their freedom and raised in the Resistance headquarters, he was conditioned to respond to everything Taelon with a certain level of mistrust, but not to the point where he strived to personally dispose of every single one of them, like some of his peers seemed to do. He in fact literally could not imagine the world without the Taelons. Da'an in particular had been there for him, more so than any of his ‘true’ parents (and whose fault was that?). So Liam, without consciously realizing it, learned to compartmentalize like any child in the middle of divorce: he was “a big boy” and a fierce leader for the Resistance, he took his idealistic rants and “What’s happening to my body?” questions to Da’an – probably the only being on the planet not fooled by his adult appearance, and meanwhile deep inside he hoped that one day “mommy and daddy” would make up and live happily ever after.

Liam knew not to admit it aloud, so that not to upset “the other side”, but, despite their differences, Da’an was his family, his closest family, now that Lily and Augur were gone, and he was glad to hear, but not really surprised that Da’an felt the same. So, if Da’an came with a bunch of annoying relatives, as far as Liam was concerned, they could stay if in meant Da’an did too. After all, the only Taelon he truly hated was Zo’or, whose “public menace number one we’d all feel better without” status was an absolute. Now it seemed he should have listen to Da’an about there being no absolutes. Better yet, he should have asked about Da’an’s reasons for his agonizing loyalty to the Head of the Synod, not just write it off as a sign of overcautiousness and indecision.

‘Shit!’ the Protector repeated aloud, as Da’an’s humanoid façade suddenly disappeared entirely, and for a moment the glowing form underneath exploded with a violent purple flash before settling for barely visible pale blue. Combined human and Kimero instincts taking over, Liam gently scoped the barely conscious Taelon up, grabbed the luminescent appendage lying limply on the arm of the chair and pressed the shining circle on his palm roughly to where Da’an’s own rudimentary shaquarawa should be. Kimerian silvery energy signature interweaved eagerly with the Taelonian blue one, soothing and strengthening it. Da’an came round with a shudder.

‘Thank you, Liam. I feel better now,’ he uttered solemnly, trying to sit up straight. The Protector only tightened his embrace.

‘I don’t like Zo’or,’ Liam whispered softly. ‘But I will not let anyone hurt you by hurting your child.’ And, feeling Da’an’s body sag in relief against his shoulder, he added in carefully enunciated Eunoia:

‘We shall seek a solution together, Esteemed Parent.’

***

**

*


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the only chapter that is definitely AU. Although, if you feel you prefer 04.22 over whatever tooth-rotting fluff I wish upon them all, you may just skip the first introductory part. The actual Da'an&Zo'or scene technically fits within the events, if not the spirit of canon.

+1

Zo’or was not on the bridge. And that was never good, especially in recent times, where he didn’t really have anywhere else to be.

It all started when Liam, frustrated by both the Resistance’s inability to read the logs Augur had managed to download from Ma’el’s ship and the Taelons’ increasingly desperate attempts to recover said logs, took a leap of faith and secretly brought a copy of the disk to the Embassy.

Being intimately acquainted with the work of the mysterious scientist’s mind, Da’an took mere hours to crack the code; and to discover that all those contradictory messages about humans being the Taelons’ only hope and not to be approached ran down to the fact that in Earth Ma’el had found the only planet in the known universe that the Taelons could adapt to, but the Jiridians could not, and then he didn’t want to feel responsible for the Taelons coming and blowing humanity off their rightful home. Independent research promptly commanded by the Synod confirmed that any weapons the Taelon race could use to wipe the human kind out would harm the eco-system as well; and, frankly, the 406 surviving Taelons didn’t need an entire planet to live on (actually, thanks to the tremendous progress in spacecraft building since Ma’el’s times, they didn’t need a planet, full stop).

The news had understandably devastating effect on the Taelon Communality. Over a hundred of them chose to join the Void right away (T’than was the first, and Zo’or would have probably been the second one to do it, but Da’an wouldn’t let him go, and after months of blatant disregard of mental discipline the (now ex) Head of Synod just didn’t have enough control to escape their psychic link on his own). The remaining Taelons either turned to their ancient religion, trying to find solace in the rituals long forgotten in the quest for scientific solution, or threw themselves into joint Human-Taelon projects, now viewing humanity as their natural successors and genuinely intending to pass on as much of their wisdom as was possible in the short time they had left.

And then some humble representatives of the human science (which even the most pro-human Taelons secretly considered inadequate to grasp the profundity of knowledge its Taelonian counterpart had to offer) suddenly realized that, while the mystery of “the core energy” might never be solved, adapting, say, the Solar power to the needs of Taelon consumption shouldn’t be much more difficult than adjusting it to power countless Taelonian devices all over the planet (Taelon researchers later discovered that Ma’el’s had actually “learned” to live on Solar power on his own, but it had taken about a hundred Earth years most of the surviving Taelons didn’t have). The discovery wouldn’t rectify the genetic deficiency, but, without the threat of imminent demise hanging over their heads, more and more Taelons found it acceptable to interlink their future with that of the human kind. The minority that now considered it their duty to guard the Taelon culture in its pure uncontaminated form was given the reign of the mothership and, ironically, charged with building more habitable bases on the Moon (because accommodating 300 Taelons in 70 Embassies all over the world was no strain, but, in the absence of hunger and illnesses the Companions had helped to eliminate, humanity itself would soon need more room than their planet could provide).

Zo’or was neither a scientist nor an architect, but he knew how to pilot the Mothership, and had been relatively content to do it until about sixteen months ago, when Doors International revised its disastrous Cold Fusion project, and brought it surprisingly close to its original purpose. The result was by no means safe to consume, but perfectly suitable for powering up the more sophisticated Taelon systems – including the Incubator.

So now Da’an, along with a few other optimistic older Taelons, was eagerly awaiting the arrival of his no longer immured offspring. Even the most developed embryo would take about a dozen Earth years to mature, and was already written off by Taelon physicians as most likely sterile, but Da’an was giddy anyway, his only worry being how the situation must upset his firstborn. Da’an’s Protector, however, was more concerned about what crazy scheme an upset Zo’or might come up with; and therefore resolved to keep an eye on him.

***

Zo’or was not on the bridge. He was nowhere near “the Womb” either, which was good, except he was not on the Mothership at all. He was in the Embassy, which might prove very, very bad. Liam grabbed his energy gun and rushed to Da’an’s quarters.

Da’an was sitting in his elaborate chair, unrecognizable to human eyes, but to Liam the tangle of electric blue and pale lilac was as unique and as familiar as any friendly face. Another glowing figure was kneeling in front of him, Zo’or’s primarily red colouring unmistakable. The young Taelon’s energy matrix was fluctuating erratically, indicating, as Liam’s stash of Kimera knowledge supplied, the final stages of Ka’athaam, the fertility cycle, which shouldn’t be happening at all (as Zo’or’s body had no use of it), or at least not that soon after he had gone through the same unpleasant experience during their memorable trip to North Virginia not even five years ago.

‘Why does it keep coming, Esteemed Parent?’ Zo’or asked in Eunoia, his voice high-pitched in a way that in a human could be described as “close to tears”.

‘I do not know, my child,’ Da’an replied gently. ‘But it will pass, it is almost over. Just try to relax’.

Blue appendage moved swiftly to send a series of mauve impulses towards the blazing-read head, and its alarming flickering slowed down a little, but didn’t stabilize completely.

‘I can’t take it anymore,' Zo’or whimpered. ‘I just want it to stop. Why won’t you let me go even now, when you can finally have normal children, not some useless, barren, crazy – ‘

‘Shhh, do not say it, do not ever talk like this. Whatever happened between us, whatever else will happen, you are my child, Zo’or. You are not replaceable. When your siblings are born, we will both welcome them into our family. But I will never stop loving you. I will always – ‘

Liam consciously relaxed his clenched jaw and backed away from the room as silently as he could. He had no reason to be jealous. He won’t deny Da’an reconciliation with his eldest child the Companion had carved for so long. But now that the unofficial war was over, and there were no more human vs Taelon secrets to be kept, next time Liam himself had a personal problem, nothing was stopping him from bringing it to Da’an too.

*

* END *

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I do realise that in the show Da'an is portrayed as a charismatic, but not necessarily a good person. Please don't bother pointing out all his obvious flaws I tried so hard to step around ;-).  
> Otherwise, thanks for your attention.


End file.
